At that moment, Mei Gaojie suddenly burst into tears, under the contemptuous, knife-sharp gaze of Jun Moxie. The old man was suddenly overcome with a sense of utter shame.

This was the disciple he had nurtured with painstaking effort, the pillar of the empire he had cultivated! Yet, such actions—what difference did they make compared to corrupt officials and grasping sycophants? What separated them from the very parasites eating away at the nation?

Mei Gaoyang stood silent, lost in thought.

“Mei Gaojie, this is the fruit of your decades of effort, the prized student you meticulously trained. The mainstay of the state you imagined; yet these men, at best, represent only a tiny fraction of them. You have governed Wenxing Academy for decades; how many students like these have you truly educated? Mei Gaojie, you have always occupied the highest moral ground, believing yourself untainted by the filth of this mundane world. And now you dare to criticize me for how I plague Tianxiang, but why don't you open your eyes wide and truly see who is destroying Tianxiang?”

“The damage wrought by you, the supposed ‘clear stream’ of this world, is thousands, tens of thousands of times greater than mine! Mei Gaojie, what qualifications, what standing do you have to accuse me? Even if you accuse me of rebellion, I still require troops, do I not? Tell me, where did these soldiers come from? Were they not forced into rebellion by your own students, pushed past the breaking point by official tyranny? Mei Gaojie, if I rebel, you are my greatest conspirator, my strongest ally, my most hidden accomplice! Do you agree with my assessment, Great Sage Mei?” Jun Moxie laughed coldly. “It’s amazing what surfaces when you start digging. Turns out we’re all cut from the same cloth, one family, one crew! A crow finds fault with an old crow—who the hell can claim to be clean? Isn’t that right?!”

Mei Gaojie staggered back two steps, the previously serene expression utterly vanished, his face pale as ash.

“Mei Gaojie, Lord Mei, Esteemed Sage. You have spent decades claiming to foster the empire’s pillars, but have you seen today what sort of trash you have actually nurtured? Nothing more than countless national parasites! Hahaha… it’s utterly laughable! Look at where you live—is it any different from a beggar’s hovel? But can your own clean sleeves offset the sins you’ve committed? No! This debt is too vast to be tallied! You call me a plague upon humanity, leaving endless ruin, but what about you, old sir? I am dull-witted, truly unable to conjure the adjectives to describe it; perhaps you yourself can offer a fitting summation for your own legacy.” Jun Moxie’s words grew sharper.

Only then did the true purpose of Young Master Jun finally begin to show itself.

Jun Moxie’s goal today was to round up all these hypocrites in one stroke. But Jun Moxie’s investigation was merely the tip of the iceberg. Over the past fifty years, even if Wenxing Academy graduated two thousand students annually, that amounted to well over a hundred thousand people! A hundred thousand individuals formed an impossibly vast network, deeply entrenched throughout the entire Tianxiang Empire.

These people undoubtedly constituted an enormous power base. Even if only a small percentage held high office, they could certainly inflict catastrophic losses!

Jun Moxie was not inherently a good person. If these people hadn't offended him, he wouldn't have bothered much, perhaps only stepping in occasionally when injustice crossed his path.

But now, with the scholarly world rising up to attack him first, Jun Moxie was truly enraged. Therefore, Jun Moxie’s first step was to thoroughly purge these dregs of humanity!

If ten thousand men block the road, kill ten thousand. If a hundred thousand stand in the way, kill a hundred thousand! Jun Moxie would show no mercy to such people; so what if he had to slaughter a hundred thousand?

I am an assassin, but within my heart, there is a magnificent rainbow! I do not seek justice, but I demand fairness!

If the world cannot grant it, if the laws cannot grant it, I will grant it!

This, too, was a conviction that once burned within the Evil Lord’s heart.

“Lord Mei,” have you ever calculated the immense losses you have inflicted upon the empire? Did you think that when I instigated those so-called Three Great Talents to insult you in public back then, I was merely attempting to humiliate you? I was merely using their mouths to try and shock you awake, to guide you back from the precipice, but alas, you remained willfully blind! Every word you utter, every sentence, claims to be solely for the sake of the Tianxiang Nation. So I ask you: how will you face the sins you have caused, and do you desire to cleanse them?” Jun Moxie’s voice grew somewhat sinister.

I first make students insult their master on the street, and then compel the master to personally betray his students! You should be grateful, thankful, even worshipful of me! But I wish to see how these sanctimonious hypocrites will manage to stand in this world after their true faces have been ripped away!

Jun Moxie thought viciously.

“Cleanse the sins?” Mei Gaojie’s clouded eyes brightened, as if grasping at a lifeline. “Can such tremendous sins as mine truly be washed away?”

“No, some sins are irredeemable, but one can still make amends for those that are salvageable. I believe that you, sir, can use your abilities to reduce the sins that can still be mitigated,” Jun Moxie coaxed gently, like an old witch seducing Little Red Riding Hood.

“Hahaha,” Mei Gaojie said, “Jun Moxie, I finally understand the true intent of your visit. You wish to use my hands to eradicate my students, thereby ensuring they can never find firm footing in Tianxiang! I grasp your meaning. But this calamity originates with me. Though I may be pure and righteous, I still possess a loyal heart. Since I have caused disaster in this world, how can I not find a way to eliminate it? Even knowing you are using me, I am willing!”

Mei Gaojie let out a bitter laugh, his brow furrowed. “Heaven have mercy! I, this old, lost horse, have finally awakened. It is time to account for everything I have done! Yet the Confucian School must not perish; even if Tianxiang collapses, a new era is bound to arise. What if this old man plays the role of a merciless teacher this time?”

Saying this, he suddenly trembled all over, and tears streamed down his aged face. The old man recalled the students he had personally taught, from ordinary youths to famous talents, who then entered officialdom to become provincial governors or local magistrates—the lifetime of effort, the boundless hopes he had poured into them, had all dissolved into nothingness! He had established Wenxing Academy through painstaking planning, hoping for posthumous fame, to etch his name into history books. But now, he would indeed be recorded in history, branded instead with eternal infamy!

Had he truly erred?

“Mr. Mei, your starting point was not wrong, and no one can criticize your original intention. But you overlooked human greed.”

Jun Moxie seemed to see through his thoughts and decisively resolved this doubt for him. “Ability is certainly necessary, but virtue is far more important! For a person devoid of virtue, the greater their ability, the greater the disaster they can inflict. Your Wenxing Academy constantly boasts of righteousness, yet it remains mere rhetoric, never truly embedding what true justice is within the core of the academy’s heart! As a result, this so-called righteousness becomes nothing more than a weapon you use to attack others! Even when committing evil deeds, you do so with an air of perfect justification.”

Jun Moxie chuckled lightly. “You must know, even the most heinous acts rarely lack a plausible, high-sounding justification. For scholars such as you, steeped in literature, finding such reasons is effortless! Repeating this process time and again makes one increasingly self-righteous! If this continues, the consequences are predictable.”

“A righteous person must first rectify their heart; educating people must begin with cultivating virtue!” Jun Moxie declared. “This is the true meaning of education!”

“A righteous person must first rectify their heart; educating people must begin with cultivating virtue.” These two phrases exploded in Mei Gaojie’s mind like the morning bell and evening drum, and suddenly, he seemed to understand so much more.

Then he turned and entered his room, returning shortly with a thick ledger.

It was meticulously detailed, recording from the academy’s founding until the present moment: when each person entered officialdom, their postings, their transfers, their current activities—every detail was clear and unmistakable!

This record had once been Mei Gaojie’s greatest pride, his achievement, the thing he constantly flaunted. But now, it had become the death warrant for his students!

“Jun Moxie, regardless of whether you are good or evil, whether acting for justice or personal vengeance! Based solely on your words about the true meaning of education, I believe you! But I implore you, purge these disgrace-worthy individuals! Consider it a debt I owe you! I swear to repay it in this life or the next!”

Mei Gaojie’s face suddenly hardened, and he commanded sharply: “But you must investigate thoroughly; do not kill the innocent who truly serve the people on my students’ behalf! Otherwise, even as a ghost, I will not let you rest!”

Jun Moxie snorted. “I never consider myself a good person, but compared to you all, I possess far more conscience! If I were to mistakenly kill a good man, I would not sleep soundly, and if I cannot sleep, what meaning is left in life!”

Mei Gaojie laughed wildly, his voice heartbreakingly bleak. He suddenly mumbled, “A well-slept life, ‘A righteous person must first rectify their heart; educating people must begin with cultivating virtue!’ I have taught hundreds of thousands of students, yet only today do I truly grasp the meaning of education. I only regret why, before this moment, I ignored these words? Why did I scoff at them? Hahahaha… I intended to leave an eternal, glorious legacy, but instead, I leave behind eternal infamy! I loathe it! I loathe it!”

“Using the hand of my enemy to clean up my own house—such an absurd situation belongs only to Mei Gaojie in the world! Hahahaha!”

He laughed twice, then suddenly stepped back two paces and rushed forward. Jun Moxie sighed, moving aside.

With a sickening thud, Mei Gaojie’s aged head slammed into the stone table. Brain matter sprayed forth, and he died instantly! His eyes, wide open but unseeing, stared fixedly at the gray sky. In his pupils, one could vaguely discern a gaze filled entirely with shame!

“Mei Gaojie, if I say you were righteous, then you were hopelessly pedantic. If I say you were incompetent, yet your heart could still discern right from wrong. You deserved death, yet you did not deserve death! But because you offended me, the death you deserved became the death you should not have suffered!”

Jun Moxie held the ledger, his heart devoid of sorrow or joy. He stated flatly: “The good men, I will not slaughter indiscriminately—not one less than they deserve. And the bad men, likewise, I will not spare a single one!” To know what happens next, please log on to [Website Address] for more chapters, support the author, and support legitimate reading!